“Come on,” Eliza said at last, taking a deep breath before slipping beneath the surface like a water moccasin, silent and slick. I watched her silhouette disappear below the floating dock and I plugged my nose and followed her under, reemerging in the gap between the top of the water and the underside of the wood. It was one of our secret spaces, a private little corner of the world that we had discovered as kids and claimed as our own. I could still remember the day we found it, years ago, doing somersaults in the water and our fingers digging into the pluffy bottom. I had been afraid of it at first, getting that claustrophobic feeling like being trapped inside a submerging car, the pocket of air above me growing smaller as we sank. But Eliza had explained that as the tide rose and fell, the dock did, too. The air would never run out.
She had convinced me it was safe, that we were safe. That we always would be.
“Do you think he saw us?” I whispered. There was something so intimate about that space: that little bubble of shared air and the wet wood smell and the way the algae-flecked water seemed to tint our skin, too, turning our faces a glowing emerald green. We were covered from all sides, the floating buoys that held up the dock encompassing us completely. Unless you were standing directly above us and happened to look down, you’d never even know we were there.
“I don’t know,” she said at last, water dripping off the tip of her nose. “I don’t think so.”
We listened in silence as his squeaking footsteps ambled closer until, eventually, the sound of wood turned to metal and we knew he was retreating down the ramp that led to the floating dock itself. The platform bobbed above us as his bare feet made contact and we both held our breath, watching. Waiting. The presence of him on top of us suffocating and strong. We felt him move to the edge of the dock next and that’s when I caught a glimpse of him from between the gaps: one hand pushed into his bathing suit pocket and the other holding a cigarette, the bare skin of his back a burnt-almond brown. He could clearly see our stuff up there—our damp towels and flip-flops and matching burlap beach bags; our phones folded into our jean shorts, an attempt to keep them cool and dry—but still, he didn’t seem to sense us. He didn’t look down.
Instead, he just stood there, staring straight into nothing. Claiming that spot like he would soon claim everything. Welcoming himself right into my life.
CHAPTER 11
“Margot?”
I watch as Levi’s once-familiar eyes dissect me from the top down, like my presence here must be some kind of mistake. He looks as surprised as I feel and I can’t help but dissect him right back, noticing how much he’s changed in the year since I’ve seen him. Those lanky legs that once carried him down the dock are muscular and toned now; his arms are wider, thicker, juicy blue veins bulging out of biceps that didn’t used to exist. His right hand is gripping a can of Natural Light so hard I can hear the aluminum crack and a newly ripened Adam’s apple juts out of this throat, bobbing when he swallows, pulling a spray of patchy stubble tight across his neck.
“So, you two are already acquainted,” Trevor says, nudging Levi with his shoulder. The insinuation makes me nauseous and I swallow it down, wincing at the taste.
“Why are you here?” I ask, even though it’s obvious. He’s here because he’s going here. He wouldn’t be at a fraternity, spending the weekend getting coaxed and courted, if he wasn’t planning on returning come fall.
“Why are you?” he counters.
“I live here.”
“So do I.”
“Is that a commitment?” Trevor whoops, but we both ignore him. I suppose we should have known this was inevitable, running into each other like this, but maybe I thought he would come to his senses and change his mind. Stay in the Outer Banks or go somewhere else entirely, far away from both me and the memory of her.
I look around, unable to escape her. Eliza is everywhere now, her absence between us so pronounced it’s impossible to see anything else. It’s like Levi brought the ghost of her into this very room with him: sitting on the couch with the bong in her lap, fingers around the mouthpiece and her eyes cast down. Blond hair hanging, obscuring her face, naturally comfortable the way I’m naturally not. She turns her head slowly and she’s staring at me now, a violent kink in her neck like a sharp right angle and a glare beneath those spider-leg lashes, the whites of her eyes a deep, bloodred.
She smiles at me, a curl to her lips as they hover above the glass, and I know she’s waiting to see how I’ll react, what I’ll say, like this is one big test she orchestrated herself. Plopping two rivals in a ring and watching as we fight to the death—for her.